Warp Wraith, page 35
“There’s no way you can know that, Dashawn.” Brula looked back and forth between them. “Either of you.”
“But he is,” Callisto insisted. As he continued the certainty of his words only grew, as if they’d been put there by someone else. With a jolt, he wondered if they had. He’d never paid much attention to Malik’s Flux talk, but he’d seen what he could do. “I don’t know much of anything, and I can’t explain how I know.” He nodded to himself, then to the other. “But the Wraith...Mal...he’s still alive.”
Venture nodded back at him with a crooked smile. That expression twisted as he eyed Brula again. “Then what we’re talking about here is leaving him.”
“What we’re talking about is preserving the Revenants!” Brula retorted. “We’re talking about keeping the fight alive.”
“There is no fight without him!” Venture snapped.
“That’s not true, either,” Callisto declared, stepping up to the projector and positioning himself between them. “Mal didn’t believe that.” He chuckled. “He believed we were all the Warp Wraith.”
“So, what are you suggesting?” Venture anger and frustration turned on Callisto. “Pull out of here and one of us put on the damned mask?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying, then?”
Yet another silence dragged. But Callisto could feel its weight settling squarely upon him and him alone. What indeed? He saw Mal’s masked visage, glaring out of the back of his mind. He’d always imagined the spooky bastard was smirking at him from behind that. Was this one of your grand schemes? A plan within a plan? The Wraith knew which way Dashawn Callisto would bend when the pressure was on. Maybe that had always been the point.
“Where are the Theocracy ships now?” he asked.
Frowning, Brula touched a control on the projector and the holograms swimming above it vanished to be replaced by an image of Circe and red icons gliding towards it. They were still nearly an hour out from effective bombardment range.
“Alright,” Callisto said, “now display the angles of Malvik Station’s gun.”
Brula tapped another command into the projector and an icon winked from the surface of the planet. Dotted lines drew themselves out from it, showing the lowest the fusion battery could depress to fire over Circe’s curve. Malvik’s builders had placed it well to cover the northern portion of the continent of Dracon. A starship couldn’t just approach the planet without harassment.
“They’re going to have to take up station somewhere within these angles,” Callisto said, pointing out the obvious.
“They could just park on the dark side,” Brula replied.
“Not if they intend to support the ground battles,” Callisto replied. “At least a few of them will have to expose themselves to Malvik’s fire if they intend to participate, at all. That was part of the reasoning behind seizing the station.” He met Brula’s gaze. “When they’re doing that, they will be most vulnerable.”
“And anchored to the planet’s gravity,” Venture added with teeth glinting out from under the bush of his whiskers.
“So will we be,” Brula retorted, “if we intend to hit them again at anything but long range.” She shot Venture an angry look before turning it on Callisto. “That’s what we’re talking about now, isn’t it?”
Callisto flinched at the bitterness in her voice. “I guess it is.”
She folded her arms before her chest. “Then let me remind you both that we’ll still be outnumbered, too.”
Callisto nodded at that, but a smile worked its way onto his lips. “We’re the Revenants; we’re always outnumbered!” He hurried to continue as Brula rolled her eyes. “That Mangler ambush showed the way! We put on a high-g antimatter burn and coast in hard and close. We’ll have the advantage of surprise.”
“Insanity!” Brula barked, sending a flinch through the onlookers. “The Admiral would never agree to this.” She began to shake. “I won’t agree to this!”
Venture started to respond, but Callisto held up his hand. Both officers turned to him. Both’s expressions crinkled in confusion. Listening to the chuckle shaking up from his own chest, Callisto knew he’d be just as confused. But it all made sense, suddenly.
Mal, he thought. Mal, you spooky devil. You knew. Maybe you didn’t see this moment. Maybe it wasn’t anything from the Flux or anything witchy...but you knew. You knew I’d be at a place like this. You put me here. For this.
“After Lydiria,” Callisto said, “the Theocracy Fleet had me flagged for observation. Dark Science had me tagged as possibly ‘morally compromised’.” He snorted. “Apparently, I didn’t bomb a starving mob fast enough.” He sighed, tried not to linger on the fiery memories of that night too long. “They were more right than they knew, of course.”
Venture frowned, obviously wondering where he was going with this. Brula, who knew a little more of Callisto’s story, showed no reaction.
“Rather than retire me from active duty for evaluation, they placed me in hotter hotspots,” Callisto continued. “Fire should cleanse my character failings, they said. We were sent to the big fights around Vorral when it rebelled and assigned fast patrol—specifically, intercepting and destroying any traffic fleeing the planet.” His lips pinched. “That most of the refugees would be unarmed was a given.”
Venture grunted.
“I’d already decided I wouldn’t shoot,” Callisto said. “I didn’t expect the Wraith to be there with the Rebel Stars. I sure didn’t expect to be shot down. And I really didn’t expect him to follow me down.”
Callisto was smiling know with the memory. “He’d seen something—I’ve asked, but he could never explain it. He fished me out of that wreck, and he showed me another way.” He met Brula’s gaze, then Venture’s. “I know you both have similar stories. Everild did.”
“We all do,” Venture replied softly, with a sideways glance at Brula.
“Now it’s a whole planet, not just individuals. Not just us.” Callisto balled his fingers. “It’s a cycle he’s started, picking up broken pieces and forming them into a new whole.” He shook the fist that he’d made. “We’re all part of it.”
“Dee,” Brula replied quietly, almost pleadingly, “if we stay here, that cycle breaks.”
“Maybe,” Callisto acknowledged with a grim nod. “Maybe, not. But I didn’t follow him all this way to leave him crash-landed on some rock.”
He locked gazes with her.
“Did you?”
THE SCORPIODS AND THEIR swarm of hoverbike companions howled back north along the narrow valley that had brought them to the Citadel. Wind hammered in through Number One’s open boarding ramp—jammed that way by battle damage. Malik didn’t pay it any heed, sat on the ramp’s slope with one hand on a hydraulic column, perched there in a manner that no doubt looked precarious to the others.
He didn’t often ponder ending it all, but Malik felt the pull—the ease—of despair as he hadn’t in a long time.
Ingrid scuttled down the ramp to kneel at his side. Her concern for him was as tangible as a fume. “I checked again; no contact from space.”
Malik winced. “I know.” Reaching out across the Flux had been unnecessary; once the fight in space was lost, the Revenants really would have had no choice. He’d left them none.
Ingrid sat carefully at his side. “Your orders?”
Orders, he mused to himself. What have those gotten any of us? He’d led the growing band that eventually became the Revenants. For a decade, he’d built them up, scrimping and scavenging, fighting, politicking among the brittle-spined Rebel Stars. He’d built all that and honed his own skill, all for this moment.
This failed moment.
“Return to Reyes,” he answered hoarsely and rapped a knuckle on the jammed boarding ramp. “Repair what we can on the Scorpiods.”
“The gap will likely be under attack again,” Ingrid noted.
Malik released a sigh. “As the Flux wills it.”
The Flux. Malik snorted bitterly to himself. He had seen many manifestations of it, prowling the Far Rim of the galaxy. The Theocracy thought of it as fuel or weapon. Some of the cults he’d encountered on worlds long-gone feral after the collapse of the Empire regarded it as ghosts of ancestors—or just plain magic. Certainly, the Sisterhood of Circe saw it that way.
Flux means change. The Fenreir perhaps had the most right of it. Their very existences were infused—some would saw cursed—with the rawest expression of the Flux, constantly warping them. He knew it drove many of them mad as children, left traumatized, dangerous individuals. He knew the were-woman at his side had had a particularly hard time becoming an adult. She’d told him. But she’d embraced change. She’d accepted that the Flux would always be in motion.
And that’s the damned lie of it. Malik clenched a fist and beat it softly upon the ramp, needing to give motion to some part of the dark tangle writhing inside him. It moves us to change, but when we do, it has already moved on without us.
It had brought back him here—then moved on.
Ingrid set her hand firmly over his fist, stilling its motion. Malik looked down, was surprised to see he’d actually been denting the metal.
“I am...sorry, Mal,” she whispered to him. “I know how much this must hurt.”
He yanked his fist away. “You cannot possibly know.”
She flinched. “You’re right. I can’t.” Her voice hardened. “But I don’t deserve your anger, either.”
He looked at her, saw the glint of a fang-tip at the corner of her pinching lips. The bruising across her face lingered, though fading with the quickness of vitality all Fenreir shared—the Flux; the change. Her hard beauty challenged his gloom and he relented before it, gave her a stiff nod by way of apology.
The fang retracted.
Malik looked out across speeding cliff faces lit by harsh sun. “I abandoned them,” he murmured. “For ten years. They were my Company. They were my Band. And all this time...” He shuddered. “I wish I could say I can’t imagine what they went through. But I can. I can see it every time I close my eyes. I have seen it.”
“You came back.”
“Too late,” he rasped.
The assault shuttle banked to starboard as it navigated a bend in the gorge. The tilt of its hull forced, Malik to hang on to the hydraulic column with his left hand. Reflexively, he reached for Ingrid with his right, hooked it around her shoulders to keep her from sliding. The motion tugged her close.
For a moment, that wasn’t so bad. She looked into his eyes and hers sparkled while an almost-shy smile crinkled her lips.
The ship leveled and she made no effort to pull away. And he didn’t make her.
“The Number One Scorpiod is in the best shape,” she said. “I can make certain it’s prepped for space flight.”
Malik stiffened. “What?”
She turned in the crook of his arm to face him. “You cannot stay here, Lord.” She set her hand upon his chest. “You can’t be lost with the rest of this.”
“The Revenants have gone.” Malik shook his head. “A single Scorpiod has no hyperdrive.”
“It’s better than being trapped down here. We...” She had both hands on his chest now and her voice shook. “I can’t have you blasted from orbit with all the rest of this. Someone has to carry on.” She looked fully into his face. “You have to go on, Malik.”
Sickened, he shoved her back and wobbled with the motion of the shuttle to get to his feet. Clenching the column, he turned away from her. “So, it’s another Sacred Band I’m abandoning,” he snarled. “And, again, on this cursed planet!”
“Mal...”
The metal of the column creaked in his trembling grasp and it took real willpower for him to ease the pressure. The Flux is change, but it’s not destiny—no matter what the Sisters say; it’s just entropy.
He’d trusted all their lives to chaos.
Still, that vision lilted across the backs of his eyes. It had lured him across the stars. It had become flesh and reality in this place. Was that chaos?
“She’s seen me, Ingrid,” he whispered to the were-woman.
“You showed her?”
Malik grimaced under his mask at the bitterness—the raw jealousy—in her words. He half-turned to her and ran a finger along the livid scratches along his face, as well as the scoring across the corner of the mask. “It wasn’t exactly voluntary.”
She winced a little at her own reaction, nodded once. “So, now she knows it all.”
“Not even close,” Malik chortled darkly. “But the mask is off—literally.”
Ingrid locked gazes with him. “She knows what you are. Soon, they’ll all know.” The yowl of the hoverbikes riding the air currents around the Scorpiods drew her attention. She watched their weaving courses, perhaps sought the one Edie rode. “I give her credit; she’s stronger than I thought.”
“She is.”
Ingrid’s lips quirked as though she’d bitten into something foul. But the expression passed. “That poor, dead little witch said it was Destiny. The two of you.” She got to her feet carefully. “This place. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“What I’m thinking is that this is one prison I won’t be escaping.”
“So, we stay. And we die.”
Malik glanced over her shoulder to confirm none of the others in the shuttle hold were within earshot. “Are you not a daughter of Clan Fury and the Fenreir?” he asked harshly. “We fight. The rest is inconsequential.”
She bristled at the challenge. “I am those things,” she answered without wavering. “I am also yours.” She stepped to his side, would not let him look away from her as she set her palm once more on his chest and let it warm to him there.
“Do not forget it, Malik Vigil.”
DOORS SLID BACK BEFORE Vondrak to allow him access to the balcony ringing the Palace tower outside his Sanctum. Sunlight bit his eyes and tingled unpleasantly across undead flesh that preferred the dark. But his mood was too buoyant for annoyance at this point.
“Do bring that out, would you?” he called over his shoulder.
Footsteps brought one of Vilan’s aides hesitantly onto the balcony with him. The young mortal fought to control her tight breaths as they occasionally dissolved into whimpers. Her white naval uniform was freckled across the breast with blood spatter and the buttons undone where that had smeared and left a handprint. She held a tray in both hands. Atop it sat a huge, two-handed crystal goblet. Dark redness as rich as any wine shivered within it as her hands shook.
Vondrak ignored it for the moment as he drifted to the edge of the balcony and set a hand upon its balustrade. Fingernails pattered across the rail. Below him, Aleister seethed with activity. Through coils of its ever-present smog, he saw hovercars lining the avenues, bowing under the weight of luggage and passengers. Mortals in fine clothes argued and jostled. Vehicles sidled into long lines of traffic jams. Metal and glass crashed as that went amiss, somewhere in the packed streets.
Cowards, Vondrak thought with a sigh. Panic.
They couldn’t know that it was over. They could only know what their simple mortal senses had perceived and their brutish animal brains had processed; that the capital had emptied of defenses—that it looked like they were being abandoned.
Vondrak touched a control on the balustrade, activating the small computer and holoprojector there. A globular formed to his left, showing images relayed to him from Konrad. He saw burning vehicles in an open field and blaster bolts crisscrossing its breadth. These converged on the tree line at the field’s opposite side, turning woods in fiery matchsticks. Vondrak had a glimpse of figures running, then tumbling as Theocracy fire mowed them down. Rising above the smoke towered the peaks of the not-so-distant Magvars.
A sub-display bubbled into existence beside the first globular, showing a map of the region and the icons of Konrad’s force, now less than ten kilometers south of Reyes and hitting more determined resistance. But there were many red blocks and Konrad had the weight of the Reserves’ armor with him.
“M-my lord...” Vilan’s aide started to say. Her arms shook from holding up the tray and massive goblet—or maybe from fear.
He waved her into silence dismissively and touched the projector control, toggled to a different set of views. What filled the globular was an orbital scan, showing the deceptively slow crawl of red icons into the space over the planet. They spread out, taking up precise angles that would let them bombard the surface without having to come over the horizon for prolonged period.
The largest of them pulsed, would be the Desolator. Her firepower would probably be enough, alone, to finish the battle; but even the dreadnought couldn’t stand up a to ground-based fusion battery indefinitely. Sestus was showing more care than his flippant personality would suggest. He was setting his ships up to pick Malvik and the Freedom Brigades apart in phases.
A flash to the north made even the midday sun pale in comparison. Its source was far too distant for the thunder of its discharge to reach the city. But the follow-up pulses and the scars of livid fire shafting up into the sky were more impressive than any rumble.
The naval aide gasped at the strobes and the goblet shook enough that its ruby contents slurped over its lip to streak 0the sides and puddle on the quivering tray. “Lord...”
“Right, right,” Vondrak said, as though he had truly forgotten. Turning, he swept the goblet from the tray with one of its ornate side-claps and cupped it in both hands. Holding it high, he declared, “To concluded business.” Blood tingled in flaring nostrils gloriously and he drank.
He’d allowed it to sit a little too long and much of the tingle of Flux had faded from the velvety medium—had been absent from the lives that had generated it. Still, the salty, coppery taste went down smooth. Too smooth. In his haste, it sloshed over the sides, sluicing out the corners of his mouth to runnel down his neck and soak his chest.
“Ah, damn,” he chortled wetly, tossing the emptied goblet over the balustrade one-handed. Smirking through a mask of gore, he said to the aide, “Looks as though I’ve made a mess.”
